The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is an alliance organization that is composed by the manufacturers of consumer electronics products, mobile phones and computers. The DLNA is responsible for defining unified transmission specifications to allow a variety of products from different manufacturers to communicate with each other. Consequently, the video and audio devices that comply with the DLNA protocol can be in direct communication with each other, make synchronization action or even transfer data.
The devices that are operated under the DLNA environment include for example a digital media server (DMS), a digital media player (DMP), a digital media renderer (DMR), a digital media controller (DMC) and a digital media printer (DMPr). The digital media player (DMP) and the digital media controller (DMC) are also referred as control points (CP).
Generally, according to the capability of the control point, the printing system of the DLNA architecture has two operating modes. The two operating modes of the printing system will be illustrated in more details as follows.
FIG. 1 schematically illustrates a first printing system of a conventional DLNA architecture. As shown in FIG. 1, a control point 10 comprises a first printing controller (Printing Controller-1, +PR1+) 101. Via the control point 10, a ready-to-print file is browsed and selected from the control point 10 by the user. Then, a print command S1 and a XHTML print file 11 corresponding to the ready-to-print file are transmitted from the control point 10 to a digital media printer 12. Then, according to the XHTML print file 11, a request command S2 for acquiring a print content 13 is issued from the digital media printer 12 to the control point 10. According to the request command S2, the print content 13 is transmitted from the control point 10 to the digital media printer 12. Meanwhile, according to the XHTML print file 11, the print content 13 is outputted from the digital media printer 12 to a paper (not shown).
FIG. 2 schematically illustrates a second printing system of a conventional DLNA architecture. As shown in FIG. 2, a control point 14 comprises a second printing controller (Printing Controller-2, +PR2+) 141. Via the control point 14, a ready-to-print file is browsed and selected from the digital media server 15 by the user. Then, an address of a print content 16 corresponding to ready-to-print file is acquired by the control point 14, and the address of the print content 16 is stored into a XHTML print file 17 corresponding to the ready-to-print file. Then, a print command S3 and the XHTML print file 17 are transmitted from the control terminal 14 to a digital media printer 18. Then, according to the XHTML print file 17, a request command S4 for acquiring the print content 16 is issued from the digital media printer 18 to a digital media server 15. According to the request command S4, the print content 16 is transmitted from the digital media server 15 to the digital media printer 18. Meanwhile, according to the XHTML print file 17, the print content 16 is outputted from the digital media printer 18 to a paper (not shown).
Regardless of which type of printing system is operated in the DLNA architecture, a single digital media printer is used to print out the entire of the ready-to-print file. If the ready-to-print file contains a great number of pages, it is difficult for the single digital media printer to process the ready-to-print file. Especially when an old digital media printer or a low-tech digital media printer is employed, the processing time is very lengthy.
As known, the use of a high performance digital media printer to replace the old digital media printer or the low-tech digital media printer may save the printing time. However, the high performance digital media printer is expensive, and the replaced digital media printer is usually discarded. In other words, the high performance digital media printer is neither cost-effective nor environmentally-friendly.
Therefore, there is a need of providing an improved group printing method and an improved group printing system in the DLNA architecture in order to eliminate the above drawbacks.